


Lifeboat

by Eggling



Category: ARK: Survival Evolved, Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-10
Updated: 2020-06-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:35:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24639259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eggling/pseuds/Eggling
Summary: On a trip to the Earth's future, Victoria finds a piece of her past.
Relationships: Jamie McCrimmon & Victoria Waterfield
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	Lifeboat

**Author's Note:**

> on [tumblr](https://the--highlanders.tumblr.com/post/620512961012908032/lifeboat).

The towering buildings pressed in around Victoria, filling the sky and half-squeezing her breath out of her lungs. When the Doctor had said they had landed in a city from the Earth’s future, she had expected to feel something like the awe of a trip to London in her own time, a city bustling with the wonders of art and invention. But for all that this city was built of metal and glass rather than stone, it seemed ancient, half-held together by overgrown vines, full of smashed windows and rusted edges. Strange pathways that she could only suppose were roads crossed over each other above her to twist and turn at angles that were almost dizzying. The gardens and plazas that seemed to fill every inch of the lowest level must have been beautiful once, but they had fallen into disarray, and the few people she passed did not stop to appreciate them, hurrying about their business in a way that lent the whole place a sense of fear.

She turned a corner and found herself greeted by a long stretch of grass, interspersed here and there with patches of muddy water. A metal plinth sat in the centre of the largest pool, much like others she had seen around the city, though this one had no hologram above it. But something else had been built over it, and the sight was so achingly familiar that she could have sworn her heart failed her for a moment. The sandstone fountain seemed to call out to her, a lone piece of home set adrift in an almost-alien landscape, and she ran down the ramp towards it, her shoes clanking strangely on the battered metal. Forgetting the sodden ground beneath her, she all but flung herself towards the fountain, kneeling in front of the wall that ringed the plinth and pressing her forehead against its cool stone in relief.

“Hello,” she murmured. “Where did you come from?” Looking up, she studied the sculpture set in the middle, a stern-looking man clutching a strange object. He seemed familiar, but her examination of his face was interrupted by the realisation that his clothes could have been taken out of her own time. A soft cry escaped her, and she buried her face in the fountain’s rim again as if sinking into a parent’s embrace. The city seemed to have no sense of history, as if it had sprung up overnight, and the Doctor had even danced around giving her a proper answer when she had asked where on Earth they were. Being faced with something so heartwrenchingly close to home ought to comfort her, she thought. And yet an awful sense of dread was settling in her stomach at the knowledge that this city had been built and grown old since the planet’s ground had last felt her footsteps. Even this fountain seemed new, its stones pristine and smooth rather than weathered and stained with soot and grime, a mockery of the world she had known.

“Are ye alright?”

The sound of Jamie’s voice sent her scrambling upright, almost toppling into the water in alarm. She adjusted her skirts hurriedly, wincing at the dark stains on her stockings. “I’m fine.” Her words came out embarrassingly uneven, and the comforting expression that filled Jamie’s face made the knot in her chest bubble into frustration. “I’m just looking around. _Alone_.”

“Aye, aye, I can see that.” Jamie raised his hands a little, as if in surrender. “The Doctor an’ I were just getting a wee bit worried, ye know, ‘cause we’ve never been here before, an’ we didnae want tae lose ye.”

She hung her head, cheeks reddening, watching him from behind her fringe as he nodded towards the fountain. “Who’s this, then?”

“I don’t know.” Turning away under the pretence of studying the fountain, Victoria tried to surreptitiously rub the few traces of wetness away from her cheeks. “I didn’t see a plaque.”

“There’s one round here, look. _E. Rockwell_.” He read the name out slowly, as if rolling it around experimentally inside his mouth. “Looks a bit lost, doesn’t he?”

Victoria smiled to herself, small and bitter and carefully hidden from Jamie. “Yes, I suppose he does.” The name rang out in her mind, and she looked up at the statue again, searching the man’s face. “My father knew someone with that name. At the Royal Society. I wonder if it’s meant to be him.”

Humming an absent agreement, Jamie sprawled himself out on the metal ramp leading up to the fountain. “Or maybe it’s some great-great-grandson. We must be pretty far in the future.” He sat up, running his finger over the letters on the plaque again. “Hey, maybe it is him. This says he was born in eighteen twenty-two.”

A jolt ran through Victoria, as if someone had touched a lightning rod to her spine. “That can’t be right.” Her heart was pounding faster than it had any right to. It was a mistake, Jamie would shake his head and read out the right date, and then they would laugh about how silly it would be to find something of her own time here, of all places, in this timeless city. It was such a small thing, she told herself – just a fountain in an overgrown park – there was no need for her head to be spinning so violently. “You must’ve got it wrong. Read it again.”

Jamie was nodding away to himself, apparently oblivious of Victoria’s urgency. “Eighteen twenty-two. That’s what it says.”

“Who is he?” Every muscle in Victoria’s body was screaming for her to get up, to read the plaque herself, but she was frozen in place. “Why did they build a statue to him?” An awful thought sprung into her mind. “Is this _London_?”

“Dunno.” Jamie puffed up his cheeks, blowing out a sigh. “He died… No’ that long ago, it looks like. Hundreds of years after your time.”

“That’s impossible.”

“That’s what it says.”

“What else does it say?”

Jamie shrugged. “ _To the man we remember_.”

“What else?”

“Nothin’.”

She wanted to scream, to rush over and tear the plaque off the fountain with her bare hands, to sink down to the ground and cry all the tears she had been saving since Skaro. But instead she stood, quiet and still and proper, and said, “I don’t suppose they could have written the date wrong.”

“No,” Jamie said flatly. “I don’t suppose they could have.”

“And I suppose they _are_ his dates of birth and death.”

“Looks like it.”

_I wonder who he was_. She reached out to touch the edge of the fountain, the sandstone warm against her palm, almost as if it were alive. _I wonder if he was as lost as I was_. She opened her mouth to speak those words, wondering if Jamie would understand, but they stuck in her throat, stinging as she swallowed them down. _I wonder what happened to him_.

“Do ye think he was the same man?”

“Mm?”

“Ye know, the one your father knew.”

Victoria shook her head, squeezing her eyes closed. “I don’t know,” she murmured. “I don’t _know_ , I don’t – I don’t understand this place, Jamie. He can’t be the same man.” She glanced up at the statue again, as quickly and nervously as if she was staring at the sun. His face could have been familiar – but she had only met Rockwell once, many years ago. The stone man before her was older, his face marred by a single scar that she could only imagine had been dealt to him by some wild beast in Africa. “How could he have been born in eighteen twenty-two and have died here?”

“Well, you’re here, aren’t ye?” Jamie wandered around the fountain to stand next to her. He bumped his shoulder against hers in a way that she supposed was meant to be reassuring, but she stepped aside, leaving a wide gulf between them. “Maybe he was workin’ on time travel, like Maxtible was.”

“That couldn’t be him,” Victoria said. “He was a chemist, not a physicist.” Jamie’s closeness was scratching at the back of her mind, and she bit down on the urge to snap at him. Instead, she straightened herself up, setting her shoulders back and mustering up the most detached, commanding tone she could. “I would like to be left alone, please.”

“Oh.” A flicker of hurt crossed Jamie’s face, but he quickly settled back into an easy grin. “I’ll go an’ find the Doctor, then.” He squeezed her shoulder, and she shook him off half-heartedly. “You’ve got us, ye know.”

“I’m quite alright, thank you.”

“I know ye are.” Giving her one last sad smile, Jamie strode off across the park. She watched him go, scowling when he reached the top of the ramp and the Doctor stepped out from behind one of the raised garden beds. They leant in towards each other, murmuring something and casting glances towards her, and she tossed her head, turning her back towards them pointedly.

The statue stared back at her, cold and lifeless, and she glared at it for a long moment before her eyes began to water and her resolve faltered. The knees of her stockings and the hem of her dress were soaked through with muddy water, and she felt small and bedraggled, like a small child caught making a mess in the garden by her nanny. Slowly, reverently, she knelt down at the fountain’s edge and let the burn of held-back tears rise in her throat. They dripped down her cheeks and tumbled onto the sandstone, sinking in and vanishing. She let herself cry until no more tears came, then reached into the fountain to splash the water over her face and rub away the salt left behind. “Sorry,” she mumbled, wiping her hand dry on her skirt. The statue gazed down at her, still proud and haughty, but for a moment she could almost imagine a kindliness in his expression. “Thank you.”

Curling up more comfortably on the ground, she pressed herself against the side of the fountain, clinging to it as if it were a lifeboat and she were adrift upon the sea.


End file.
